We run a high-traffic website at http://www.onedirection.net and we've been using Disqus throughout this year, initially to great effect.

We accepted the upgrade to Disqus 2012 back in June, loving the increased user experience and the better community feel - albeit back to an Iframe again. However the fact we were specifically told that the comments are now being indexed by Google was great, and the dynamic nature of the iFrame suited our site (all our pages are cached, so by using Disqus the comments are updated straight away).

However, it seems that the Disqus 2012 comments are not being indexed, and we've noticed an obvious fall in traffic over the last few months. Initially we didn't put this down to Disqus and focused on other issues (Google algorithm updates etc). But we're quickly coming down the reasoning that our pages now contain less indexable text, and we are getting less traffic because of this.

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Despite sending this very thread to Disqus, and emailing their below-par support team a number of times we've still received no reply, so we are reverting back to the older version of Disqus. Admittedly we'll lose the nice features from 2012, but we'll regain local rendering of the comments. Instantly our whole site will probably gain 50% more indexable content, so I will update this thread in a month or two and update on any SEO & traffic difference.
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BuckersOct 17 '12 at 19:07

Buckers put annotations in Google Analytics place a note from the date your switched the comment system to iframe and another when you revert back to the embedded comments. I spoke with Talton from Disqus support about migrating 30k threads from a moveable type site to WordPress a few months ago and used their URL mapper / CSV uploader but broke the files down to manageable sizes of 5k each. Would love to hear back and see how your traffic was affected after Google re-indexes your comments.
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AnagioOct 22 '12 at 9:23

Good idea, and we've just left an annotation. We'll update in due course, cheers.
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BuckersOct 22 '12 at 13:11

2 Answers
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Hmm, first of all, if your SEO strategy depends on Google indexing your comments, you're doing something wrong. I know that user-generated content can help you rank better in some ways because it's usually natural content about asubject related to your website, but I kind of doubt you're getting less Google love because you don't have enough indexable text.

Instead, try optimizing some other things first. Your <head> element is full of scripts, your main page loads over 1.2 MB, with >300 requests (2.39s for the DOM to load, then another 27! seconds to fire the onload event). It's slow and bloated, and Google won't like that. Your HTML also is quite a mess, which makes it harder for Google to see what is relevant content and what isn't.

But the most important part: no, Google will not index iFrames. Disqus is indexable because you can link it to your Wordpress comment system, where the comments through Disqus will be injected into your own comment system. That way, if Disqus won't load Wordpress shows the same comments from it's own database, allowing Google to index it. Right now it looks like that's not the case. See http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/plugins/integrating-disqus-into-wordpress/

Ok, can we concentrate on the original issue at hand? The site receives 1 million unique visitors per month, so its not doing badly. It's a content heavy site, lots of pics, lots of interaction so of course its not going to be larger than most. Some of the articles and pages we have on the site have over 1000 comments, so the fact that these are not indexable by Google will definitely have some effect on traffic. That's blatant. Regarding Google indexing Disqus Iframes, this is something Disqus have stated is true (blog.disqus.com/post/22325598158/try-out-disqus-2012).
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BuckersOct 15 '12 at 9:17

Nowhere do they literally state that their comments are indexable in an iframe. Iframe's aren't indexed, or at least not as part of your site (the iframe runs on disqus.com so that's where it'll be indexed). As for the rest, just trying to help. You point out that you're experiencing a fall in rankings. This correlates well with the Google Panda & Penguin updates and the fact that you serve a poor user experience: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
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Stephan MullerOct 15 '12 at 9:21

The previous version of Disqus rendered the comments directly as part of the HTML, and we accepted the upgrade to 2012 based on the assumption that the Iframe would now be indexed. Past SEO experience and common knowledge told me to stay clear of Iframes purely because they weren't readable, but this year Google have stated they index them in certain cases, and the confirmation from Disqus gave us a great belief too.
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BuckersOct 15 '12 at 9:21

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Heh, I'll drop the point. Sorry, just trying to point out where I think the problem is more likely to be. Anyway, yeah the iframe thingy isn't going to work. Hope for you that Disqus will reply.
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Stephan MullerOct 15 '12 at 9:25

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Appreciate the speed concerns Stephan, and we really have put a lot of work into speeding the site up. We get a score of 92/100 on the homepage, in Google Chrome Pagespeed. Some of the main issues we think are advert related so we might look at alternative ad suppliers.
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BuckersOct 15 '12 at 9:27

You should do very less blog commenting in those site where it is going for pending. Because they will consider your comment in proper manner. You should post your comment in Wordpress comment plugins friendly websites. So that you will get higher rank as well as best organic traffic. Comment practice in SEO is good. But excess is bad.
Thank You

The question was about Disqus comments on their site, not comments they are making on other websites.
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paulmorrissOct 22 '12 at 9:12

Thanks paul for the response. Generally disqus comments are approved quickly. So people do comment in those sites. As the quest is their site has disqus template, people will try to do spam there. So Google will not indexed that site. I think so. Because according to Google update commenting is also considered as spam. Give your valuable answer. Thanks
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Smart JazzOct 25 '12 at 9:39